The 23rd Lake Murray Men's Conference in Ardmore, OK

Oh, I am Gary, and I am an alcoholic

and it is really good to be here. You got no idea. I know I've said thank you before, but Larry, again, thanks for everything that happened and thanks for the introduction. And it's just been a great weekend and it's truly a privilege to do anything like this. But it seems a little more special this trip.

My dry date is the third day of December 1964,

and that day pretty much started out with a cop dropping me off at the door to a nut house in Evanston, WY. And

just kind of keep that in mind and the little backtrack a little bit,

tell you how that came about. I was raised on an experimental farm outside of Cheyenne, WY. I was not the experiment

and and I was just a kid growing up out in the country and in a state that there's there's more people in some of the suburbs of Dallas than there is in the entire state of Wyoming. So it's not all cluttered up with folks. And

so I

whenever I was around the crowd, whoever it was that it was the classroom or what it was, the kid growing up, I was a whole lot more comfortable out there in the grasslands that I was in, in any rooms where there were people. And that didn't seem to get better.

Every once I was something go haywire in my life and one of my parents or grandparents would say, well, he'll grow out of it. Well, I wasn't going out of that stuff. It just, it wouldn't happen.

And

just just real briefly,

my dad was an alcoholic and

he was a little guy is 5 foot 6 inches tall, weighed about 100 and 2530 lbs soaking wet and had a small man's attitude. He was irritated a lot and

that's not a cheap shot, but it's true. That's all. And

you know, he just was. You couldn't trust the money drank. He kind of knew what to expect when he wasn't drinking because he'd be irritated. But when he was drinking, he could be the most fun person you'd ever met, as long as you didn't cross him.

And so I learned when to cross and what not to. Until I got bigger. And he was. Then it changed a little bit. Not much. One day I asked him

how my grandfather died on his side of the family. I'd run across the picture of my grandfather standing out in the grasslands in northeast Colorado,

and he's got a flat brim hat on. He had a gun in his belt

and his hands on his hips and a pint hanging out of his back pocket. And I remember looking at that picture, his name was gay. That's when it was a name. And

I said, how'd my grandpa Gay die? And my dad said, well, he died a natural death. And I said, how's that? And he said he was coming home on Saturday night, fell off the book board and froze to death. And.

I I never heard a different answer for that.

I asked my aunt and she wouldn't tell me and so I assumed that was probably what happened to him. So I think probably my genealogy stayed pure time it got to me and I don't know but I think

I am.

Couple things going on. I did make it to school that my dad told me one time I had to finish high school no matter what

he said, because I didn't really like school at all and wanted to do other things. He's no, you're going to face high school, even if we have to move into town, so you don't have so far to walk when you get old, you're going to finish school. And

so I just knew I had to do that. As much as I disliked it and you know, I knew if I flunked out, he would make me go back. I just knew that was going to happen. And so I'd I'd work a little bit to pass. Now, getting through school and doing the work wasn't the problem is I just hated going. It was so uncomfortable there for me. It's just going to take. It was awful but I did finish the skin of my teeth and and

some things are going on by then as it work out. I relate to Tim a lot. I remember basketball interfering with my drinking too, and

I didn't. I wanted to try out for basketball but by the time the coach saw me I had been trouble with been in trouble with booze and cigarettes and so Needless to say, I never made the team

and I remember being disappointed about that. I really want

I am and I met a girl in high school. I had met lots of girls and I really wished I could talk with them because I'd watch the other guys doing it seemed like a good thing to do. I really wanted to, but I couldn't put that together either. I couldn't get the guests together to, to carry on much of a conversation or introduce myself to a New Girl or do any of that. And so I guess when I was a junior and she was a sophomore,

I, I, things have changed enough of my life that I could finally meet somebody.

And I'll tell you a little bit about how that came about. As a sophomore in high school, I was hanging around with two other fellows

and we had decided to drive over to Laramie to the state basketball tournament. And when we got there we found somebody to buy us a A quarter 4 roses.

And the two guys I was with went out and picked up two other girls to come with us. And we stopped and got some Coke and we went out into the Coca-Cola.

Got to explain that anymore, Tim, you just can't.

And go say in Coke and,

and they picked up a couple of girls and we went out in the boondocks to to do whatever we're going to do. I thought about that long after I got sober. We had the girls in the car and we had the whiskey in the car and we didn't know what to do with either one back then.

But they passed the bottle around that first time and I did it right, You know, I took a slug of it and wipe it off. You got to do that first, take it and pass it on, forgot about the coat. And then the second time I came around, I tipped it up and I kept it up until I took it away from me

and everything changed.

Everything changed. What I learned right then that I had needed a drink for 16 years. I mean, I needed it. And that was exactly what I needed. And everything changed. I mean, it just did. I, I don't know. In other words, I felt great in the car. I made a grab for one of the girls and it was unsuccessful, but it was. I made the grab. I hadn't done that. And

and apparently I was getting out of hand and they were going to sober me up and put me to the truck stop to fill me full of coffee and and the truck stop I took a poke at a cowboy and you think that girl slapped me around? You didn't see anything after I

I hit him and God, it was just the greatest night of my life.

It just was. I've done all those things I hadn't had guts enough to do. Always did want to smack a cowboy. I grew up around him all the time. And then there was one I grew up around used to whip my butt every Saturday just 'cause he could

and man, I just want to get the first lick in and I did. Didn't work, but

you know, that was just and every drink I took after that, I was chasing that feeling. I don't think I ever took a drink, but what I wanted to feel like I did that night and learning

and I don't remember ever taking a drink just to be sociable. And it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense to me now.

I met the girl in high school then that I could finally talk to and I'm still talking to her

this August. Will be married 50 years.

There's been any number of times out for bad behavior for me.

I was telling Tim earlier the difference between he and I is we never divorced.

And we dated through all through high school what an army for for six months in a court martial

and, and, and got out and she was still in high school.

And the day I got out, I called the high school and I told the people in the office that I was her dad and there was an emergency in the family and I was going to go by the north door of the school to pick her up.

And few and out there really concerned that something was bad wrong and she saw me. And so that's kind of how we started out. The following September we ended up getting married and

the following January we had our first daughter. She was an 8 1/2 LB preemie.

Some of you guys are old enough to hear that

you say that a born and what you talking about? No,

I'll tell that with my wife in the room. You can watch her. Let's move saying.

And the whole time I'm drinking, I I still couldn't do anything but drink from the time that

16 years old. And I hit that nut house December 3rd of 64. And that was a month before my 25th birthday. And at that point in time we had three little girls. The youngest one was born that previous August and

I knew she was there, but I couldn't picture my mind. I didn't know what she looked like and I've been drinking that hard and heavy that day. That cop dropped me off at at the at the nut house. I was 6 foot two inches tall, but I weighed something less than 130 lbs

and taken any number of meetings and when I went in the door they asked me if I'd come in to take part in their alcoholic rehabilitation program. To this day, I don't know how they knew. They never

and that started a process that that hopefully is still going, I guess, if you will. I

the the the normal tour for an alcoholic in in the Wyoming State hospital at that point in time was a 16 week session. Didn't really call it a spin dry. And we

they kept me locked in a room for with with a little glass window in it. That's the only place to see out there. And I didn't see out like that unless I look up there and there'd be people, CNN, they'd have their nose pressed up against the glass, look funnier than him.

And I learned to eat in there

and they finally let me out and put me on alcoholic ward. And I found out I was the youngest guy in the ward

by pretty good ways. And

it was that that had a whole lot to do with it. I got to tell you that when they talked about their alcoholism and when they talked about the times they wanted to stop drinking and absolutely could not, and the times they had told their boss or their wife or whoever it was they were going to stop drinking, they really meant it. And I had done all those things. There was never a time that I said that, that I was lying.

I just meant it.

There was another time that I said that I was able to do it. I was powerless and it couldn't. It wouldn't happen for me.

I learned I was an alcoholic there the same way men of us still do, probably with the same old U-shaped gentleman at chart. You see in the inter joints. You know the various stages of alcoholism as you go down the chart on one side and suppose at various stages of recovery as you go back up on the other side. But I just remember kind of checking them off to get down to the mess at the bottom with the D TS and the convulsions and nut houses,

all those things. It talks about it so I could go all the way down.

It seemed to me it still does that.

While obviously you probably wouldn't have found any booze in my system after just a few weeks in there

or even after I got out, I'm sure it was gone. But as I look back over those, whatever it was, weeks, months, maybe first couple of years, it's really foggy,

you know, who is it that talked about it being ambulatory after six weeks? I think this high tower or something like that, but

I really think that happened to me. It just took me the longest time to snap out of it.

I if it has yet,

I want a free ride to college. They came to me in that nut house, the weaker sauce supposed to leave and they said, Gary, did you know that there's a deal out there where if you want to,

you can attend college at the University of Wyoming, will buy all your books, pay all your tuition and give enough give you enough money to maintain your life with your wife and your children. You have to understand that the alternative was I had to go look for a job.

And so obviously I would decided I'd go to school and as much as I didn't like that idea.

And so we ended up in Laramie

and at the University of Wyoming and I had to go through four years of college and three years in the summer and did I took a four year degree and three years in the summer because I didn't dare take any time off because I had to be with me at this point in time. Well, let's just take that fruit. I finished that three years in the summer. I hadn't taken a drink, but I was still suffering from untreated alcoholism.

The only way I'd even started getting close to the treatment was attending some a A meetings.

Tell you about an A meeting in Laramie, WY at that point in time back in the late 60s,

the only group met up over met in a in a / a drug store, what was used to be an old dentist office. And you get dust and learn me about like you get dust in Texas and you go in there in the dust of the blown in and, and I would get there early and take my books down to that meeting and make coffee. I made a 30 cup pot of coffee for five Alcoholics

and very often none of them show up. I try to drink the whole thing. It's wonderful. I got my own kidneys in but I

would sit there sometimes and make that coffin and try to study and that thing would be going on in here. Several people have mentioned it. The hole in their belly with the wind blowing so and this is nearly four years so, but that's doing it. And I'd look out the window across the street at the Buffalo bar had a flashing neon signs at Buffalo Buffalo

B without actually said Buffalo Buffalo.

And I would sit there and I'd look at that and my knuckles would be turning white and I'd say, God, don't let me take a drink.

Don't let me go and take a drink. I really don't want to drink

and I spent an awful lot of time that first four years. So we're thinking just like that. And one friend at that a meeting that that was about my age, but he didn't have an alcohol problem. They were letting him come to meeting because he just got back from prison for for some things he was smuggling in from Mexico. And I don't know what all it was.

And

there was no boy that was talking. One time his name was Frank. And he come into that meeting and he'd say,

I think this time the reason I'm sober, because he'd been in a lot, is I took the third step this time. I've never done that before. And then I've been sober. He says, I'm sure it's the third step. It's the answer. And the following Saturday, old Frank came down drunk. And I thought, man, I'm not screwing with that third step.

And that's all I knew about it. You know, if you don't swallow, you won't get drunk. Now that's not much air.

I understood at some level that I was absolutely powerless overtaking the first drink.

I just knew that and I don't. To this day, I don't know why I did. I really don't.

It just had to be God's gift. And it was because there wasn't a day in there that the whole embellished wind blowing. So it wasn't going on it every day. It was at least as bad as a day's drinking, I would think. At times later on, I'd moved to Denver, the people to talk about not trading their their best day drunk for their worst day sober. And I thought, that don't sound like too bad a deal to me. Maybe I ought to jump at that

phase. School ended up in Denver and

through a series of things scrambled at some meetings and and I've never been any place where where there was more than two meetings a week until I got down to Denver.

And so I would scramble to some meetings and I found a meeting where another young guy showed up. I hadn't attended any meetings where young guys show up before. And I heard this, this remarks. Some people say that I think they were good people and and want to say something that they said, Gee, we wish we'd have got a hold of this thing the same age you are when you come in now and don't have to. Wouldn't have to go through all the shit I went through and I'd sit there and think, well, I just finished damn near dying.

I don't have a whole lot to go through,

I don't think. I got another one left and I start to feel like I couldn't fit in Alcoholics Anonymous skin, that that was my fault for feeling that way because I think those people meant well

looking back on it. But I used to irritate the hell out of it

and another guy came into that group that was my age, and we started hanging out together. And So what we would do, we'd take a big book into the coffee shop and we thought the first portion of 5th chapter needed rewriting. And so we would try that. And then we'd bellyache about life and bellyache about a A. And one day we're at his house doing that when his wife throws us out of the house. She said we're the two most miserable so and so she'd ever met,

and if she had, we had to get out of their house.

And she says try a different meeting. Something ain't working for you too.

Had she known and.

And so my friend Joe gets all puffed up. He says, all right, He says, Brown, let's go down to that young people's group we've heard about. He says the babes there got to be better looking anyway. And

obviously he and Janet are not married anymore. But

we did. We went down the young people's group that night. Joe was right, they were better looking at the young people

and I heard AI hadn't heard before

Approach it for your Silver at her Day talked about they they talked about what the big Book said

and doing what it said. I had never heard that before, and no one ever said that to me

that I heard. And

so it was new. But I've been sober longer than most those people and I figured I was there to tell them how the cow ate the cabbage and they weren't listening.

Thank God they will is and some things happen there in the group. We had a lot going on back then

I wouldn't worry about. About a year before I moved down there, I'd attended the state, the Wamu State A, a convention in Cheyenne. And at this time I'm irritated because of all the people and being the only young person in there and feeling like, and I was looking back on it now, I felt like the third tradition is being used against me because they're invariably there'll be some old user come up to me and say spill more on his tie than I drank.

And I learned A2 word answer for that is not a better one and figure out what it is. And,

and,

and so, you know, I felt picked on about these guys and all that, but I gotta tell you, I went into this this convention one day and there was three younger a a standing there

and I swayed it to this day. I looked at them and I thought to myself, I wonder what these punks want, Exactly what I thought. But they were came to, they came to recruit people to go to Denver, to the International young people's Convention that was being held down there. And

in 67 and I couldn't go because I had to face college take finals or something, but I couldn't go and I never went. But when I got down there in 68, I, I, I met those same three guys and I'm still friends with one of the other two have gone and they died sober because of their activity and a

what do the young people's group and they talked about forming another meeting to go through the big book and call except we, we knew

get a little ahead of myself there. We knew that the answer was in the book and the steps, but mostly we know it was in the steps

and I was at the place for looking at the steps. I had to find the easiest way to do the steps

and and I did. I tried my best. I tried any guide to inventory was out there. One of them was from Hazleton and

and I tried looking at the 12:00 and 12:00 and I tried looking at the big book and the 12 and 12 seemed easier.

And so I tried doing what the 12 and 12 said. And I tried reading the Hazelton Guide, the inventory. I read a few pages and it told me that it was I was probably going too fast. Maybe I needed to put it down and take a break. I started that break about 40 years ago and I haven't finished it yet because I haven't picked that up yet again.

And like I said, I tried to go into steps easiest way I could. I wasn't listening to anybody else, I don't think. I don't know what's going on, what's going on. So anyway,

we finally got started in the big book and the things were going on in my life change during the reading of the The Doctor's Opinion. I understood all of it and I related to every bit of it. There wasn't a thing in there I didn't relate to. And we moved on into the the book into the more about alcoholism. We came to line there that on the first page it says we learned we had to fully concede our animal cells that we're Alcoholics. This is the first step to recovering the delusion where anything like other people are presently maybe has to be smashed

and I can't tell you why or what happened. I remember reading it then night,

and I remember all of a sudden feeling like I had been given the keys to the Kingdom.

And I somehow began to understand that effectively what I know now is pages 23 through 43 in the big book have to do with the unmanageable line.

You know,

we didn't take the first drink, This wouldn't be an issue. The whole rest of the issues, we can't keep from taking the first drink. I can't with that. And so I'm starting to gather this information and things are starting to change for me.

And we start going to more meetings. And we started a group there to go through the book. The Never Young People did. We had a bunch of men and women that were going to start a third meeting of the young people's group. And that was going to be this big book thing where we're going to go through and try and do what it says. And

I've got to tell you, by the time I just tell you, we read through what I was just talking about, I had that immense change. We got into the to the the 4th chapter

that you every night and some conversation going on was about coming to believe. I wasn't struggling so much with the concept of God. I I didn't have one then. I'm not sure I have one now, but I have a gun. But I'm not going to try to conceive what he looks like, how he acts or anything else. I just know he's going to love me and take care of me and I don't want to take it beyond that.

If not, is like Mike said today, I become God if I think I know what he is. Anyway,

talking about the second step,

coming to believe and I can tell you how I came to believe. I've been going to a meetings that now easily four years. I've been watching people come in day and their lives changing.

Now they were going to the same places I was going, doing the same things they were doing, but their lives were changing and I mean it. They were all sudden holding jobs, they were paying their bills, they were getting caught up on their child support. They're doing all that stuff. They're keeping their checkbook straight.

I couldn't do that,

you know, I was still stretching checks at a long time, so and

I'd watch them good. It's kind of had to be a God doing it. Something was changing. It's clear to me. One of my friend's name is Tom. I think he lives somewhere in Dallas now, but I haven't heard from her for years. And Tom was probably the man I had the most fun with in a a early back those years. He was crazy and I just love being around him. But he was at the at the young people's Group One night talking about the time he'd been sent to the High dollar

psychiatric center. It's called Mount Airy. Not a great name for the air has it

and they and they they had the the aversion treatment going on there and so, so many people here know what that is. If you those that don't, it's a medieval treatment where where

the hospital had just just had their alcoholic ward there and they had the treatment room in the ward and the room was just a room. It just pick, you know, picture room maybe 15 feet square with mirrored walls and shelves on the mirrors and liquor on the shelves. In the middle of the room is a what looks like a Barber chair with with a on one arm is a stainless steel pot and a swivel in front of whoever's in the chair and away from.

And they've given Thompson man abuse and they put him in the chair and they pointed at the wall and said he could have anything he wanted to to drink.

And of course he did. And he drank on abuse and he got violently ill. And in the mirrors, he can watch himself, you know, he can watch himself puking in his eyebrows falling out, his toenails curling and all that whole idea of that treatment is after that treatment, you're going to be adverse to it. You're never going to take another drink. And I'll never forget Tom said that night that it worked. It had really worked. He said he hadn't had reason or excuse to take out of you since.

And Tom's life was changing and I watched him and I came to believe that there's a power gear myself that would help me, that would restore me to sanity.

And I began to understand that the restoring the sanity that the book was talking about there has to do with what I was just talking about with that first and second step. I think it, you know, we did the most insane things we did as Alcoholics stone sober. I did took the first drink.

I took the first great Mary many times. Having knowledge of how I have behaved before, what had happened when I drink, couldn't predict what I was going to do, couldn't be predicted who I was going to smack. What is it going to go to jail?

Where the kids going to be all right, but Julie going to be you couldn't do it. No idea. And I take that first drink anyway. Now that's nuts. And that's what the second step was. It was talking about. I made that statement in Louisville one time, Tim, and I don't know if you ever knew. Carter heard a reading. And Carter came up to me afterwards and he said, don't you think maybe somehow in that second step it means we can be restored to wholeness?

And I had to concede that he's probably right, but I didn't tell him that.

We were at this point in that group going through the steps down to to 14 men. I don't know what happened to the girls. I don't think I chased them off, but they had all disappeared were 14 guys. And we're going through the book and we're serious and we get through the the first portion of the 5th chapter.

And I'll never forget the discussion we had there that one night that that we're talking about letting go of our old ideas.

And we discovered that meant all of our old ideas, not just our bad old ideas. It's all my old ideas. My very best old ideas. Got me in the nut house.

They got to go

and we were sitting in the room and one of the little guys in the room was talking about, we're reading about the, the actor and the third step showing up there. And he said he had an idea. He said he thought maybe that the 14 of us should read and

slash hold hands, read, slash pray that prayer together. Said he wanted to do that because he'd been to a number of meetings recently and they were all four step meetings. And after the meetings, he had gone up to a few people and asked them why they hadn't written an inventory.

And some of them said because they hadn't taken the third step yet.

And so Lee wanted us all to take the third step together, because if a few weeks later we would hear him telling somebody he hadn't started right, because he hadn't taken a third step, we could call him a damn wire because we heard him do it. And we understood that kind of logic. And so we did that. And I remember sitting there and getting in that circle with those guys and holding those hands and feeling stupid as hell

and saying that prayer.

And I was doing it because they were,

you know, I wasn't about to step out of the circle. I'm sure they wouldn't have cared if I haven't. But it did it because they did it. I know. And then on the way home,

I've got all this sensation going on in me and all these feelings moving about, and I told God that I really meant that prayer.

Please make it real, God. I can't stand this any longer. I don't know how much longer I can do this.

The 14 men in that group

kind of give you some history. You've met some of them here, some of you guys that were there, but

we, we lost one within a couple of weeks after that,

Eddie Durkin went out and drank and they found him froze to death in a doorway.

But the rest of us are either still sober or have died sober. And one of that group is trustee at large took a A into Russia and many of that group and there's two of us still out on the circuit doing stuff and sharing our experience.

And

Jay took big steps in carrying the A, a message into, into the Jewish community in Denver.

And those guys in there that he helped out that they're 30 plus years sober now from all of this. And a wide range of things came out of that group and it happened. I just want want to tell you that Don and I used to talk about why did that happen to us in this group?

What? We don't know the answer to that. We were just a bunch of young folks who really didn't know anything other than the answer is here

and and if you don't get anything else, get this and do precisely what it says. And based on my experience, you don't have to trust in anything else. This is enough to do it.

I

meant we had to write inventory course. And so I, I was stalling and I know never, but nobody here does that. But I, I was stalling, didn't want to do it.

And one of the guys in the group, in fact, I told you about something about him this afternoon had disappeared

and I had to, I didn't like him anyway. And, and I'd go to the digs. I mean, I'd go to, I'd go to young people's meeting and people say, where's Ernie? And I said don't knock it, he's gone. And,

and he came back after a couple of weeks and he came into the room and I remember looking at him

and there was something different about it.

And I've described it before and I haven't found a better way to do. When I looked at him that Tuesday night, there was somebody home when I looked him in the eye and there hadn't been anybody there before

and it and it changed. And when it came his time to talk, he talked about getting into a beef with his wife and running away to Lake Whitney, TX

and hooking up with Bob White, who stuck him in one of the cabins down on the lake

and gave him a padded pencil, a big book, and showed him how to write inventory. What Bob did not do is go write an inventory without showing him how. That ain't fair. It kicked one of us in the butt and give us a book and say go do it when we're at that point in our lives, probably can read the big book, not have a clue what it just said. It was my experience just went right over my head. But anyway, Ernie sat down there and he wrote his inventory, and he came out and went up to the big house and told Bob he's done.

And Bob knew that Ernie really liked the fish

and so he said, grab fun and poles and let's go out in the big boat and get out in the middle of lake. They get out in the middle of lake. Bob turns the boat off and turns to Ernie and he says, tell me what's in that inventory.

And they can't swim. So they took a fifth step.

And something had clearly changed in earning when I saw him at the meeting that that too.

And that's all he done. And I got to tell you, I went home that night and I started my inventory and his inventories go. It was probably lousy at that point in time. I'd open the big book up and all I had looked at was a three column example, which means I was missing a lot of the really important stuff. Would you agree? And it was a lousy inventory. The only thing it did was save my life.

That's just all it did

and I took my took my fifth step with Ernie.

The guy hadn't liked and that was the beginning of things to start changing for me.

I,

I've been fired from my job and

I was looking for a job and didn't know what was what to do. I remember trying to trying to tell the people that were firing me from my job that, that I've just done all this work in a A and I had taken this fest up and all that. They should get out of here. You're not doing the job. So

I,

I was recruited into a business, I wouldn't have picked for all the money in the world. The

last thing on my list to do it was straight Commission. And I, I was too terrified to do that. I didn't have enough trust in God to take care of that. And it was just, but that was the only thing that could get nothing else was showing up and it turned out isn't good. I was good at it. In a short time, I was a 50% partner in the business. And then a short time after that, things started happening in our lives and it's time to move on.

And so I gave my half of the business to my partner

and my Julia and Julie and I moved to Indianapolis.

I've cut out some of the drama there, but that's the bottom line. We moved to Indianapolis as a result of a prayer and the next morning

some of the old timers know who won.

My wife and I had said a prayer the night before

that we didn't know what was going to happen or what to do

and but it was time to do something different

and we went to bed and gone to sleep and my foot hadn't hit the floor. Next morning and I get a phone call from Don Roy. Remember, Don Larry?

And he says, I'm not sure why I'm calling you.

He says, I'm sitting here in my quiet time and you just came to mind and I called you. And so he offered me a job to come to to somewhere in the Midwest and go to work for him selling advertising to car dealers and banks and stuff like that and radio production.

And Julie and I thought about that for maybe 30 seconds. And I think the question was, do you really think that was from God? And the answer was it sure beats a bolt of lightning.

And

and so we get to Denver and Eric Denver get to Indianapolis. And at that point in time, back in the 1977, Indianapolis only had about 50 a meetings in the city population maybe 5-6 hundred thousand.

And most of them are speaker meetings. There were very few discussion meetings. Not that that's bad, but what that meant is that it meant as a new guy in town that was willing to shoot off his mouth ended up talking at all 50 meetings before a pretty short order. And I was telling my story about going to the steps up to this farm and but I couldn't get any takers to do it with me. I really kept saying somebody's going to didn't happen. And it took me 3 years.

And I think I wore them out.

And when a

a guy that had come in, that was still my favorite redneck of them all, he was nasty. And he's one of those guys that sit in the Gold Brick Bar and they'd have contests and who could hold the burnt cigarette on the arm the longest. No really great, really intelligent, bright guy.

And he can't call me. One day he says, I want to start one of the meetings, taking the people through steps like that. And I said great, glad to hear it. He says, going to be at my house on on on Wednesdays. It's a great start. Next Wednesday o'clock I said great. He says, you'll come, won't you? And I said sure. And so we did. We went over that. An interesting thing. We had 14 men there

and we lost one and I hope he didn't go freeze to death and we never saw him again.

But from that one, after the first one was done, the men in there, including me, had had such a great experience. They went out in ones and twos and started doing the same thing we had just done and getting some more people to do it with that. And and then later on some girls got to doing it. And today you could go to the Indianapolis Metropolitan area. And

I don't know what to guess. I think if Mike and I were to really put the pencil to it and trying to find out how many of those kind of workshops are going on,